It’s a running joke that when taking a multiple-choice test and have no idea of the right answer, always choose C.  It’s how I got through college. When starting a small business, there are Plans A, B and C.  And C is still the right answer, but it’s more than a lucky guess.

Plan A:  You love the idea of being your own boss. You are good at something and decide to turn it into a business. Then you discover that there are many hats to wear in a small business. In The E Myth, author Michael Gerber defines these roles as The Entrepreneur, The Manager and The Technician.  You dive in and do your best to perform all of the roles, but soon discover that you can’t keep up.  Each day holds too many tasks  and you realize that you aren’t good at one or two of the roles. You become frustrated and disillusioned as your dream slips away.

Plan B:  You are wiser and hire employees to do the work so that you can work on the business. Then you discover that your employees are late to jobs, or don’t show up at all, or the workmanship is poor.  And even worse, you know that their handwritten time cards are largely inaccurate!  You hired people, but there’s no accountability system in place.  William Deming said, “You can expect what you inspect.” 

Plan CThe Chronotek Plan.  Hire good people and use our telephone and web-based timekeeping solution to help manage your off-site, hourly employees. We have uncovered some of the common problems a small business with remote workers faces and how we can solve them.

PROBLEM:  Falsely reported hours on handwritten time cards.  A study has shown that on average a company loses 10 minutes a day per employee due to time theft. Run those numbers and see how much is wasted in lost wages.

SOLUTION: Our timekeeping solution is an investment at a fraction of the money lost in wages, and will capture accurate time based on a simple and quick action by your employees: call a toll free number or use our app to clock in and out.  Either method takes about 15 seconds and you recoup lost, unearned wages. (And you don’t have to track down and manually calculate those handwritten time cards!)

PROBLEM: Missed jobs. There’s nothing worse than getting a morning call  from your best customer because his building wasn’t serviced the previous night.  You had an employee scheduled; the employee didn’t call out, so you went to bed and assumed all was well.

SOLUTION: This nightmare can end with our no-show alerts.  Get a text or email alert if your employee doesn’t clock in by the time you specify on the schedule.

PROBLEM: Countless hours processing payroll.  You’re either paying someone to process payroll, or you are spending time doing it that could be invested in prospecting for new business.

SOLUTION: Use our seamless QuickBooks API Interface to quickly and efficiently transfer time card data from our system to the timesheet section of QuickBooks.  Then cut checks.   Done.

PROBLEM:  Losing money on jobs. You bid on new jobs based on an estimated amount of time to get the work completed. Then at the end of the month you wonder why you’re searching the sofa cushions to make payroll. You’re certain that you bid the jobs accurately, but as you analyze your handwritten timesheets you realize that your employees are spending too much time at each site (or at least reporting they are).

SOLUTION: Protect your profits with the Budget Planning Tool. Our new Budget Planning tool analyzes actual hours along with future schedules to help monitor your budgets in real-time.  Through interactive charts and easy-to-follow color-coded graphs, you will know each day if your budget is on track or not.

We believe that our web-based and telephone timekeeping system can change your life and keep your dreams alive.  It’s a simple and easy-to-implement solution.  Just choose C and you’ll pass the test!